British man drives a TVR from the Arctic Sea to the tip of South America
Elon Musk promises Model 3 safety changes after crash report
Driving a 1972 Ford station wagon from Berlin to a Finnish ice-racing course
F1 to offer track rides with Alonso, Verstappen, Häkkinen
Custom made electric ride-ons that turn heads
Can Johan de Nysschen make Cadillac great again (in the U.S.)?

New Fiats to teach you to drive more efficiently using eco:Drive

We've seen various schemes by manufacturers to get drivers to operate their vehicles more efficiently. Nissan has a pedal that pushes back at you and many manufacturers are now putting eco-gauges inside their cars. Real-time mile per gallon indicators have proven useful to many drivers as well. Fiat is looking to do even better, using the processing power of your personal computer to analyze your driving habits. Using Fiat's Blue&Me technology, a USB drive is used to download your past driving statistics, which are then transferred to your PC. Next, a computer application called eco:Drive analyzes the data and gives you a score, with 100 being the most efficient. The eco:Drive application then give you a step-by-step tutorial on how to improve your score.
An online community of eco:Drive users will allow anyone to compare their driving statistics to other people in real-time. More drivers will help the database offer better solutions to its user base. The application is now in beta and can be downloaded at Fiat's web site here.

[Source: Fiat]

Press Release:

Fiat and AKQA launch eco:Drive

LONDON, Oct. 7, 2008 - Fiat and AKQA have developed eco:Drive. A motor and technology first for linking drivers with in-car telemetry -- improving fuel efficiency and reducing CO2 emissions.

eco:Drive is the very latest in digital integrated technology. It is an easy-to-use computer application that connects your car to your PC. Using cutting-edge analytic software, eco:Drive dissects and evaluates your driving style and shows you ways to cut down on fuel consumption, reducing your CO2 emissions and saving you money. In fact, with consistent use of the application, you can expect to reduce your CO2 emissions by up to 15 per cent.

-- It then awards you a mark out of 100, according to how efficiently you have driven.

-- Step-by-step tutorials then help you improve your score, giving you practical advice on how to perfect your driving style, using information from your own journeys.

eco:Drive is designed to empower Fiat drivers worldwide. As the number of users grows, so does the online eco:Drive community, enabling drivers not only to access their own performance data, but also to see where they stand within the global eco:Drive family. What is more, the system will evolve and develop with feedback from each eco:Driver taking part. As numbers grow, the application will automatically update and improve.

The beta application, developed by AKQA in conjunction with Fiat's Engineering and Design Department in Turin, was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show and is available for download in English, French and Italian from fiat.com.

Lorenzo Sistino, Fiat Automobiles CEO, speaking at the Paris Motorshow, commented, "Eco:drive is also the first step of a revolution; in fact, for the first time ever, a standard vehicle is connected with a PC and with the Web. It is also an innovative technology, but with an important social and educational objective: this is the first time that an automotive brand has launched an interactive technology that helps its customers improve their style of driving in order to save and to respect the environment."

"This is a significant advance in automotive technology - this is the first application which links drivers with in-car diagnostics; it will shape the way all car manufacturers consider digital in the future and we're thrilled that Fiat are leading the way with AKQA", said Luis Cilimingras, Responsible of Digital strategy at Fiat.

Legal

We get it. Ads are annoying. Ads are how we keep the garage doors open and the lights on here at Autoblog - and keep our stories free for you and for everyone. And free is good, right? If you'd be so kind as to whitelist our site, we promise to keep bringing you great content. Thanks for that. And thanks for reading Autoblog.

Here's how to disable adblocking on our site.

Click on the icon for your Adblocker in your browser. A drop down menu will appear.

Select the option to run ads for autoblog.com, by clicking either "turn off for this site", "don't run on pages on this domain", "whitelist this site" or similar. The exact text will differ depending on the actual application you have running.